The farming community, with picturesque Lake Providence at its center, is a scary window into the future -- a look at where the rest of the country is headed if we don't change our economic policies to work for everyone, not primarily the rich.

Below, you'll find a list of the 25 most equal and most unequal counties (including parishes and equivalents) in the United States. These numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which uses a wonky measurement called the Gini Index to measure income inequality. A rating of 0 means the place has perfect economic equality. A rating of 100 means only one person in that place makes literally all of the money and everyone else is left with $0.

The most equal countries in the world get ratings in the 20s and 30s. The United States, which is the most economically divided of all of the developed countries, had a Gini index of almost 48 in 2012, putting it behind the most-equal nations such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, of course. But America, land of the free, home of the middle class, is worse on this measure than Iran, Nigeria and Nicaragua, according to a CIA list.

"Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth," the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in January. "When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues -- as it did in a special feature in October -- that the magnitude and nature of the country's inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong."

Meanwhile, extreme economic gaps tear at the fabric of society. We're a better country when prosperity is shared, as it was before the late 1970s.

The data below is averaged over the five-year period from 2007 to 2011, which is the latest data available that includes all counties, including the smaller places. Some counties technically overlap because of margin of error, and the Gini index numbers are estimates. You can find a similar but older ranking in a 2012 Census report.